1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to internal combustion engine pistons, and more particularly to apparatus for transporting and installing piston assemblies.
2. Related Art
The transportation of a piston assembly, including a piston head with one or more piston rings and a connecting rod, comes with known problems. For example, maintaining the ring or rings within their respective grooves during transportation can be problematic, thereby resulting in lost or damaged piston rings. Thus, in an effort to prevent losing or damaging piston rings and their associated ring grooves, the piston rings can be maintained radially compressed in the ring grooves. However, a known problem of over compressing the piston rings results if the radial compression is too great. If the piston rings are overly compressed in the ring grooves, the “free gap” desired and provided between ends of the piston ring is plastically reduced, which in turn detracts from the ability of the piston ring to provide the desired expanded radial compression against a cylinder wall in use. As such, the sealing and scraping function of the piston ring is diminished.
Further, assembling the piston assembly into a cylinder bore of an engine block is a complex process requiring the piston rings to be at least slightly compressed radially for receipt in the cylinder bore. It is known to use a compression sleeve, also referred to as stuffing cone or ring, during assembly that gradually causes the piston rings to be compressed radially inwardly along a constant tapered surface sufficiently for receipt within the cylinder bore of the engine block. Although the compression sleeve functions well to aid in assembly, the aforementioned problems remain with respect to transporting and storing piston assemblies prior to installation into an engine.